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charlz_lynnAnother quickie...
I sent that paper about my mom's teeth to This American Life yesterday. Thanks, g, for suggesting that.
Wish me luck. I posted it a couple months ago... Umn. It's long. But if you wanna read it, here's the final version...
Clay
Brandiy Lynn Welch
This is so not normal. I mean, it’s probably normal to spend this much time at the Sculpey wall, sure. Color is very important to an artist. But my mom is not an artist. She’s just fed up.
She keeps picking up a color, like Mother of Pearl, holding it against the tiny object in her hand, shaking her head and putting it back. Then she holds the thing up to the wall, the off-white section, trying to find a better match.
She’s talking so loud; I wish I could get out of here. Someone, surely, is going to realize what she’s doing, and then I’m going to die of embarrassment. Today’s already bad enough; I don’t need to choke on my own saliva when someone discovers how nuts my mom is. The fluorescent lights are making every blemish on my face stand out like a ten-year-old in a bar, and the shiny floors are kinda messing with my head.
“Oh! Brandiy,” she shouts, “I can mix two and it’ll be a perfect match!”
“That’s great, Ma,” I answer from the acrylics aisle. I’m thinking about how I’m going to get out of class without getting suspended so I can work tomorrow afternoon. I wonder, too, if everyone that looks at me can tell I’m totally tripping out.
My mom finally settles on Ivory, with a little bit of Tan mixed in, and I’m so grateful that we can get the hell out of this place and back to the privacy of our weird house. Thank God the girl checking us out doesn’t ask my mother what she’s doing. I always expect them to be curious about people’s projects, but I probably wouldn’t be either. Really, how many times a day can you hear “I’m making a dollhouse for my bratty granddaughter,” or “I’m Bedazzling this hideous sweater I bought at Dollar General,” before the apathy truly sets in?
In my mom’s dirty white Geo Metro, she makes fun of my teenaged embarrassment. Sometimes she plays it up in public because she knows how mortified I am at what a freak she can be. I mean, we’re both freaks. My short, neon pink hair, facial piercings, and huge psychedelic pants circa 1969 do lend for some staring. Especially when combined with her facial piercings, brands, Shrek-like wardrobe, and matlocks. Especially in stupid Toledo, Ohio. Then she has to run around acting like a kid all the time, too. As if fielding homophobia isn’t enough work on its own. It’s ridiculous.
We pull up in front of the house, and I slap the top of the toilet in the overgrown front yard on my way in. I always do; it’s for good luck. Someday I’ll actually get around to planting things in there, but for now it’s just a toilet with some graffiti on it. And it's how I give directions to our house.
The screened-in front porch has a tiny pathway to the door, and it smells like plaster dust that’s been sitting around getting damp for a while. To the right is a pile of debris that used to be our living room ceiling.
Mom decided a couple months ago that we should have a loft, so I stood in the attic and smashed the ceiling out with a sledge hammer. She was downstairs holding a piece of three-quarter inch ply over the forty-gallon fish tank. It was just another one of her weird ideas, and I only went along with it because she said I could hang my punching bag from the rafters in the living room. The stairs she built up to the new loft are way too steep, and none of the wiring is up to code. I don’t know why she didn’t just let me do the electrical work. It is what I do all day in school. Of course I didn’t offer, she should just ask me. Anyway, the loft is pretty cool, especially for house parties. And my punching bag is hanging in the corner of the living room, as promised.
In my room, I can hear The Princess Bride playing for the millionth time, in French. My mother so doesn’t speak French. When I come out, she’s sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table. In front of her on the table are three tiny molds. She used the object she had in the store to make them out of Sculpey, and is now making a huge collection of matching things. Her first attempt is blackened in a pile next to her. She does art just like she cooks, I guess.
“It said 475 degrees, but I put it to broil instead ‘cause I was impatient,” she tells me guiltily. All I can do is roll my eyes, laughing, and walk away. I wonder if she can tell I was smoking pot in my bedroom again. Probably not, or she’d have said something.
I ask her how she’s going to make them stay in while cracking a fresh two liter. She tells me epoxy putty will probably work, and I spray Mountain Dew all over the sink.
“Mom! That shit is so toxic!”
“Yeah, but it won’t be enough to do anything.”
I’m too exasperated to say anything to this. This is our usual fight. My mom does dangerous things all the time, and she doesn’t even have health insurance. She drives to other cities (with no car insurance, either!) to hang out with her friends. She won’t call me for days and days, and I’m sure she’s dead in some ditch somewhere with no one who knows her anywhere around. Of course there’s no way for the cops to find me, or even figure out that I exist. The woman is a total danger to herself.
When I’m done with my ramen noodles, I retreat back into my room to pull a few more hits off my bong and do some bad oil pastel drawings. After an hour or so, I hear “WOO HOO!” and I know that she’s finally made a successful batch. As much as I’d like to stay annoyed with her, it is a pretty good idea. We need the money it’s going to save us, anyway, to insulate the loft. So I go to check it out.
In the kitchen, my mom is standing holding up a perfect clay tooth. On her palm she has a replica next to the original, and I can only tell the difference because the real one is shiny and has a dark brown crack down its center. The color is exactly the same. On the stove, there’s a cookie sheet with probably twenty more identical teeth.
“Alright, that’s pretty cool, Dyke,” I tell her, and she slaps me in the forehead and calls me Fatass. This is how we show our affection. Giggling, I punch her in the chest. She tells me she’s decided on super glue to hold them in and takes her mountain of teeth back into the living room to paint them with clear nail polish while I try not to throw up. She’s muttering something about me being jealous of her new teeth on her way through the dining room.
Ma’s teeth have been going bad for a while. She keeps going on about how I need to floss or mine’ll end up like hers; brown, and falling out of her head. Her last dentist appointment ended with him estimating three thousands dollars for a cap. She told him to piss off, and started brainstorming. She’s been obsessed lately. I guess this is what she came up with. Not a far throw from how she fixes our cars – with duct tape, wire hangers and a blow dryer. ‘Cept this time she’s fixing her face.
Four years from now, at the music festival we work every year, Mom is going to have something like an asthma attack. I’ll be sure this is all our under-the-radar living finally caught up with us. All these years of avoided doctor’s appointments will have to be made up in an incredibly short amount of time. It’ll only happen once while we’re still camping at the festival. It will scare the crap out of me.
I worry about my mom all the time. She’s never had a mammogram, and I think her last pap test may have been when she was pregnant with me. Even that was probably forced on her by the Marines. And a full-on physical examination? Forget it! There’s a constant fear in the back of my head that some cancer is ravaging her apparently healthy body while we’re all standing around thinking this is the good life. So when she has this attack, I’ll be sure her number’s almost up. Of course, she will only be forty when it happens. I may be known to be a bit dramatic when it comes to worrying about my mom.
The first attack might make her think about the hospital for a second. Instead she’ll borrow a friend’s inhaler. The second and third attacks, which she’ll have at home, won’t be anywhere near as severe. She’ll turn, naturally, to the internet for answers.
She’ll tell the internet what her symptoms are, and the internet will give her an MSDS for super glue. What the MSDS will tell her is that overexposure to super glue vapors can cause symptoms of non-allergic asthma. I won’t be able to help thinking that maybe if she had used epoxy putty, we could have avoided a lot of stress.
We will never be normal.
I sent that paper about my mom's teeth to This American Life yesterday. Thanks, g, for suggesting that.
Wish me luck. I posted it a couple months ago... Umn. It's long. But if you wanna read it, here's the final version...
Clay
Brandiy Lynn Welch
This is so not normal. I mean, it’s probably normal to spend this much time at the Sculpey wall, sure. Color is very important to an artist. But my mom is not an artist. She’s just fed up.
She keeps picking up a color, like Mother of Pearl, holding it against the tiny object in her hand, shaking her head and putting it back. Then she holds the thing up to the wall, the off-white section, trying to find a better match.
She’s talking so loud; I wish I could get out of here. Someone, surely, is going to realize what she’s doing, and then I’m going to die of embarrassment. Today’s already bad enough; I don’t need to choke on my own saliva when someone discovers how nuts my mom is. The fluorescent lights are making every blemish on my face stand out like a ten-year-old in a bar, and the shiny floors are kinda messing with my head.
“Oh! Brandiy,” she shouts, “I can mix two and it’ll be a perfect match!”
“That’s great, Ma,” I answer from the acrylics aisle. I’m thinking about how I’m going to get out of class without getting suspended so I can work tomorrow afternoon. I wonder, too, if everyone that looks at me can tell I’m totally tripping out.
My mom finally settles on Ivory, with a little bit of Tan mixed in, and I’m so grateful that we can get the hell out of this place and back to the privacy of our weird house. Thank God the girl checking us out doesn’t ask my mother what she’s doing. I always expect them to be curious about people’s projects, but I probably wouldn’t be either. Really, how many times a day can you hear “I’m making a dollhouse for my bratty granddaughter,” or “I’m Bedazzling this hideous sweater I bought at Dollar General,” before the apathy truly sets in?
In my mom’s dirty white Geo Metro, she makes fun of my teenaged embarrassment. Sometimes she plays it up in public because she knows how mortified I am at what a freak she can be. I mean, we’re both freaks. My short, neon pink hair, facial piercings, and huge psychedelic pants circa 1969 do lend for some staring. Especially when combined with her facial piercings, brands, Shrek-like wardrobe, and matlocks. Especially in stupid Toledo, Ohio. Then she has to run around acting like a kid all the time, too. As if fielding homophobia isn’t enough work on its own. It’s ridiculous.
We pull up in front of the house, and I slap the top of the toilet in the overgrown front yard on my way in. I always do; it’s for good luck. Someday I’ll actually get around to planting things in there, but for now it’s just a toilet with some graffiti on it. And it's how I give directions to our house.
The screened-in front porch has a tiny pathway to the door, and it smells like plaster dust that’s been sitting around getting damp for a while. To the right is a pile of debris that used to be our living room ceiling.
Mom decided a couple months ago that we should have a loft, so I stood in the attic and smashed the ceiling out with a sledge hammer. She was downstairs holding a piece of three-quarter inch ply over the forty-gallon fish tank. It was just another one of her weird ideas, and I only went along with it because she said I could hang my punching bag from the rafters in the living room. The stairs she built up to the new loft are way too steep, and none of the wiring is up to code. I don’t know why she didn’t just let me do the electrical work. It is what I do all day in school. Of course I didn’t offer, she should just ask me. Anyway, the loft is pretty cool, especially for house parties. And my punching bag is hanging in the corner of the living room, as promised.
In my room, I can hear The Princess Bride playing for the millionth time, in French. My mother so doesn’t speak French. When I come out, she’s sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table. In front of her on the table are three tiny molds. She used the object she had in the store to make them out of Sculpey, and is now making a huge collection of matching things. Her first attempt is blackened in a pile next to her. She does art just like she cooks, I guess.
“It said 475 degrees, but I put it to broil instead ‘cause I was impatient,” she tells me guiltily. All I can do is roll my eyes, laughing, and walk away. I wonder if she can tell I was smoking pot in my bedroom again. Probably not, or she’d have said something.
I ask her how she’s going to make them stay in while cracking a fresh two liter. She tells me epoxy putty will probably work, and I spray Mountain Dew all over the sink.
“Mom! That shit is so toxic!”
“Yeah, but it won’t be enough to do anything.”
I’m too exasperated to say anything to this. This is our usual fight. My mom does dangerous things all the time, and she doesn’t even have health insurance. She drives to other cities (with no car insurance, either!) to hang out with her friends. She won’t call me for days and days, and I’m sure she’s dead in some ditch somewhere with no one who knows her anywhere around. Of course there’s no way for the cops to find me, or even figure out that I exist. The woman is a total danger to herself.
When I’m done with my ramen noodles, I retreat back into my room to pull a few more hits off my bong and do some bad oil pastel drawings. After an hour or so, I hear “WOO HOO!” and I know that she’s finally made a successful batch. As much as I’d like to stay annoyed with her, it is a pretty good idea. We need the money it’s going to save us, anyway, to insulate the loft. So I go to check it out.
In the kitchen, my mom is standing holding up a perfect clay tooth. On her palm she has a replica next to the original, and I can only tell the difference because the real one is shiny and has a dark brown crack down its center. The color is exactly the same. On the stove, there’s a cookie sheet with probably twenty more identical teeth.
“Alright, that’s pretty cool, Dyke,” I tell her, and she slaps me in the forehead and calls me Fatass. This is how we show our affection. Giggling, I punch her in the chest. She tells me she’s decided on super glue to hold them in and takes her mountain of teeth back into the living room to paint them with clear nail polish while I try not to throw up. She’s muttering something about me being jealous of her new teeth on her way through the dining room.
Ma’s teeth have been going bad for a while. She keeps going on about how I need to floss or mine’ll end up like hers; brown, and falling out of her head. Her last dentist appointment ended with him estimating three thousands dollars for a cap. She told him to piss off, and started brainstorming. She’s been obsessed lately. I guess this is what she came up with. Not a far throw from how she fixes our cars – with duct tape, wire hangers and a blow dryer. ‘Cept this time she’s fixing her face.
Four years from now, at the music festival we work every year, Mom is going to have something like an asthma attack. I’ll be sure this is all our under-the-radar living finally caught up with us. All these years of avoided doctor’s appointments will have to be made up in an incredibly short amount of time. It’ll only happen once while we’re still camping at the festival. It will scare the crap out of me.
I worry about my mom all the time. She’s never had a mammogram, and I think her last pap test may have been when she was pregnant with me. Even that was probably forced on her by the Marines. And a full-on physical examination? Forget it! There’s a constant fear in the back of my head that some cancer is ravaging her apparently healthy body while we’re all standing around thinking this is the good life. So when she has this attack, I’ll be sure her number’s almost up. Of course, she will only be forty when it happens. I may be known to be a bit dramatic when it comes to worrying about my mom.
The first attack might make her think about the hospital for a second. Instead she’ll borrow a friend’s inhaler. The second and third attacks, which she’ll have at home, won’t be anywhere near as severe. She’ll turn, naturally, to the internet for answers.
She’ll tell the internet what her symptoms are, and the internet will give her an MSDS for super glue. What the MSDS will tell her is that overexposure to super glue vapors can cause symptoms of non-allergic asthma. I won’t be able to help thinking that maybe if she had used epoxy putty, we could have avoided a lot of stress.
We will never be normal.
